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There are many ways to understand Ningxia Plain, and Helan Mountain is the last important puzzle to understand Ningxia Plain. If the weather is fine, Helan Mountain looks green and white from the plain, as if the horse is running, but the mountain is not too steep, but it has a magnificent feeling. In autumn and winter, the mountainside is often shrouded in fog, and the deserted foothills and low mountainous areas without vegetation faintly reveal magical colors in the fog, which is a bit like the end of the world. Helan Mountain blocked the desert and cold in the northwest and provided shelter for the fertile Ningxia Plain.

Helan Mountain is located at the western end of Ningxia Plain, separating Alashan Plateau from Ningxia Plain. The main body of the mountain is north-south, and the northern end turns slightly to the east. It shook hands with the Yellow River near Shizuishan and held the Ningxia Plain tightly in its arms. The two sides of the mountain are like two worlds. On the east side, the altitude is steep and steep, and the natural zone is rich. The vertical height is close to 2000 meters, and the valleys are well developed, deep and long, which is caused by the subsidence of Ningxia Plain. The mountain on the west side is gentle, and the terrain between the hillside and Alashan Plateau is coherent and almost seamless.

Out of Yinchuan in the west, the west main canal is deserted. The alluvial zone under Helan Mountain is higher than the irrigation canal, so it cannot accept the nourishment and transformation of the Yellow River water. Instead, the original appearance of this place is preserved: low and hard weeds are sparsely scattered on the wasteland, and boulders of different sizes are evenly spread out to form a beach-in the long history, running water and flash floods brought them out of Helan Mountain and abandoned them on this Ye Ping. Looking down from the satellite map, the iron-gray stone beach is fan-shaped and sandwiched between green farmland and Helan Mountain. It is very obvious that the khaki drainage ditch diverges like a fan bone from several sheep mouths, passes through the alluvial fan, faces east, and gradually sinks into the massive pastoral area on the Yinchuan Plain. There is a clear dividing line between primitive ignorance and formal engineering, which marks the outer boundary of large-scale human activities.

Facing the westbound direction of Helan Mountain, the trees on both sides of the highway grow from there to there, and the shrubs grow from dense to sparse. Without the line of sight, the Xixia tomb broke into the field of vision far away, with its back to Helan Mountain, standing alone in the wilderness. This road passes through three passes and leads to Zuo Qi in Alashan, Inner Mongolia. Helan Mountain became lower near Sanguan, and the highway didn't climb up the mountain. It just turned several turns along the gentle slope, along the direction of the valley, and then broke into another boundless world. Compared with the land of plenty in Yinchuan Plain, the Alashan Plateau on the other side of Helan Mountain is vast and remote. Within dozens of miles along the mountain, the sparse grassland nourished by the spring flowing on the mountain is a paradise for camels. On both sides of the road, Alashan bactrian camels stroll in twos and threes, eating. If you go west again, a few hundred miles away from Helan Mountain, you will enter the vast desert where nothing grows.

However, the dividing line between agriculture and animal husbandry is not the innate attribute of Helan Mountain. The dividing line between farming and nomadism is not as long as imagined. Diao Yong is an indispensable figure in the history of agricultural development in Ningxia Plain. Under his rule, the production and lifestyle, social organization and management form of the farming world re-entered, and the loose nomadic society was gradually excluded from Helan Mountain. After centuries of sawing and repetition, Helan Mountain has finally become a relatively stable dividing line between agriculture and animal husbandry.

The "frontier" mentioned here is not a fixed abstract boundary with political significance, but an area where different modes of production are dispersed, contested and integrated. Different modes of production arise from different natural rings. After each mode of production develops to a certain extent, it will form its own civilization circle. Typical examples, such as China's farming civilization and grassland nomadic civilization, the tropical agricultural kingdom on the edge of the mainland, or the island cultural area represented by Japan, are all located in their respective relatively single geographical units and form their own systems. Civilization circles will expand outward from the core areas of their respective cultures in the form of a unified political system. The larger the expansion area, the greater the centrifugal force at the edge. If the expansion scope is too far beyond the geographical environment adapted to its own cultural characteristics, then the single governance model and social norms suitable for its core area will become inefficient in the newly conquered areas. When the governance efficiency drops to zero, it is the theoretical expansion limit.

In the actual historical process, in the process of expansion, each civilization circle will always encounter the opposite expansion of neighboring civilization circles-this is the root of the constant conflict between the Central Plains regime and the northern nomadic people in China history. In the eastern part of Eurasia, the Chinese farming civilization circle and grassland nomadic civilization circle have the strongest ability to conquer and assimilate, and they have a stronger desire to expand outward when forming a unified empire. However, the distance between the centers of these two civilization circles is not too far, and there is no insurmountable natural barrier, so there is bound to be an extremely fierce border between them. This zone is located in the transitional zone between forest and grassland, and it is not fixed because of climate change and the rise and fall of the two forces. The Great Wall is the most extreme embodiment of this frontier. If the Great Wall built in China in past dynasties is summarized and marked on a map, the area occupied by circles between different trends is where this frontier lies. On this frontier, the places where the Great Wall has the most unified trend and the least route change in the past dynasties belong to several oases nourished by rivers. The northwest irrigated agricultural area, including Ningxia Plain, is a typical and special "frontier" of Eurasia.

From the natural conditions, this area is not only a pasture rich in aquatic plants, but also a pastoral area suitable for agriculture after transformation; Geographically, it is far away from their respective centers of civilization. Therefore, this transitional zone itself has become the focus of coveting and fighting between the two forces of agriculture and animal husbandry. Generally speaking, both sides are unwilling and unable to further expand.

Without Helan Mountain, Chinese civilization would lack an important foothold in the northwest. If the powerful nomadic civilization is not stumped by Helan Mountain, it is likely to expand the dividing line between agriculture and animal husbandry to the vicinity of Guanzhong Plain, which will directly threaten the heart of the Central Plains agricultural area. In that case, history may be rewritten. However, it is difficult to interpret the geographical significance of Helan Mountain independently without the surrounding environment. After all, it is only a mountain more than 200 kilometers long, not a giant ridge. If there is no Ningxia Plain irrigated by the Yellow River, Helan Mountain may just be an unremarkable mountain in the desert, just like its neighbor Laishan in Ya Bu. Helan Mountain, Yellow River and Ningxia Plain are closely combined to form a real fortress: the mountain is a wall, and the vast countryside under the wall is nurturing people who defend their homes. People who have been farming at the foot of Helan Mountain for generations are the power of farming civilization.

According to online communication, the original text has been partially deleted.

Written by Xu Junda. Photography: Li Peng. The content comes from: "Authentic scenery. Yinchuan "